


Unusual Sleepover Activities

by TtotheCofA



Series: Tales from Tempo [11]
Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Bear with me here I'm being incredibly self-indulgent with my writing this week, Gawain Kingsmen - Freeform, OCs involved, the summary is trash but I wanted to post this before work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 13:43:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20341066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TtotheCofA/pseuds/TtotheCofA
Summary: Most kids don't try to summon the dead on a school night, but Lance was used to it, by now.





	Unusual Sleepover Activities

**Author's Note:**

> A recent writing from the RP blog, and set in an AU where Gawain and Arthur met a few years earlier.

Lance didn’t believe in the supernatural.

Which was a hard thing to do, when you lived in Tempo.

He could still hear the kids upstairs, chanting and beseeching a bit of cardboard and plastic to answer their questions, and Lance rolled his eyes. It was ridiculous to think that a mass-produced board game could contact the dead…but it was keeping the kids entertained, at least. Lance loved all three of them like his own, of course, but he never had been good at dealing with bored children.

He’d gotten lucky that Arthur’s curiosity so easily kept him occupied.

Glancing up at the clock on the microwave, Lance realized with a bit of surprise just how late it was. Was it 8 o’clock already? Where had that Sunday gone? Folding his newspaper, the man eased himself up out of his armchair, and headed down the hall toward the guest room Arthur’s room. He had his hand raised, and poised to knock, when he heard a little voice on the other side of the door,

“Do you know anybody named ‘Gawain’?” Lewis was asking. Lance’s hand froze in mid-air.

“I don’t think so…” Arthur replied. “But I don’t know anyone who’s dead, either. Maybe he used to live here?”

“Guys!! Guys, it’s moving!” Vivi interrupted excitedly. The boys fell quiet, and there was a faint scraping as the plastic planchette moved across the board. “N…o…t….h…..oh! ‘Not here, but’…c…l…o-oh! ‘Not here, but close.’ He lived right here in Tempo-!”  
A cold feeling ran up Lance’s spine, and he felt the cool wood of the door under his hand before he even realized he was knocking. The voices quickly hushed themselves.

“Sun’s gettin’ low, kids.” The gruff man called out. “You two gonna spend the night? I’ve got some spare sleeping bags we can lay out.”

“Um, yes sir!” Lewis’ voice called back after a few seconds of group whispering.

“Wait!” Vivi whispered loudly. “We have to say goodbye first! You never leave the board without saying goodbye.”

“Oh, right.” Lance heard Arthur whisper back. “Um….do we just say ‘goodbye’? Or-”

“O’ spirit!” Vivi interrupted with a dramatic tone. “We thank you for your time…but we’ve gotta go to bed. Goodbye!”

Lance stepped back as the bedroom door opened, and the three kids filed out. He briefly ruffled Arthur’s hair as the boy passed, and before following, cast a glance into the bedroom through the open door. The ouija board was sitting innocuously on the carpet, with the planchette still sitting over ‘goodbye’. Vivi’s ever-present pup, Mystery, was sprawled out beside it, seemingly snoozing,

Slowly turning away, Lance headed for the linen closet, and tugged out the rolled-up sleeping bags he kept under the bottom shelf. It must have been a miraculous coincidence, that’s all. There was no way Arthur would have known. There was no way.

…….

The kids decided to camp out in the living room, and Lance let them, with the promise that the TV was to be turned off at 9pm sharp, and not turned on again until morning. It was 10pm, now, and all three children (and Mystery) were fast asleep on the floor - sprawled out in a tangle of sleeping bags, pillows, blankets, and limbs.

Lance quietly watched them for a moment before making his way down toward his own room, intent on getting some shut-eye after a long day. But as he passed the guest room, and its still-open door, something caused him to stop, and look inside again. The ouija board was still sitting on the carpet, and the planchette hadn’t moved. Lance frowned, and stepped inside to pick up the game, and at least move it to the desk, where it wouldn’t be stepped on.

“…..Gawain?” The apartment was calm and quiet, and the kids were asleep. No-one was awake to see him make a fool of himself. “I don’t know how else the kids would’ve heard your name. You were the only one in town….always were proud of that fact….” Lance frowned.

“Maybe the kids were on to something, maybe not.” The man ran a hand through his hair. “But we never knew what happened to you, and….I guess this old man wants some closure.” Lance sighed, and shook his head. “…look at you, talking to thin air.” He scolded himself. With one more moment’s hesitation, the man turned to leave, only to stop after just a few steps.

There, on the whiteboard hanging on the wall, was a hasty sketch of Godzilla. He’d seen it before, nearly a decade ago, when his enthusiastic nephew asked if he could etch it into the bike he was chipping away at. It wasn’t drawn with Arthur’s meticulous lines, nor Lewis’ painstakingly copied style, or Vivi’s wild scratching.  
“….” Lance sat down heavily on the guest bed, and ran a hand over his face. Briefly, he thought he felt a hand touch his shoulder.

…..

The next morning, after his friends had been picked up, and the living room had been cleaned up, Arthur found the sketch. Smiling, the boy picked up the dry erase marker, and doodled a speech bubble containing “RAAAaaawwrr!!” coming from the giant lizard’s mouth before grabbing his things for school, and hurrying downstairs.

Lance had offered to drive him to school today, with an oddly somber look on his face. Arthur wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he didn’t want to keep his uncle waiting.


End file.
